Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) Group is to actively engage in helping local farmers and fishermen struggling with unprecedented difficulties due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

HHI Group announced on April 7 that it is launching ‘Save the Farming and Fishing Villages’ campaign, where each company within the group and their employees will take active part in. The idea is to help farmers and fishermen as well as the local economies hit hard by COVID-19, as the sharp drop in the number of people dining in restaurants and the delayed school openings nationwide have combined to result in few outlets for agricultural and fishery products and their plunging prices.

The group’s relief efforts will start from purchasing agricultural and fishery products that need to be sold quickly for the group’s corporate cafeterias. Also being planned by HHI Group 1% Nanum Foundation, which represents the group’s commitment to corporate philanthropy, is to purchase certified ‘eco-friendly’ agricultural gift sets for about 2,000 underprivileged families within the communities where HHI Group’s offices and factories are located.

The group will also wage a campaign to encourage its employees to buy more agricultural and fishery products in a bid to help propel consumption, and when the nationwide COVID-19 curve flattens enough, it also intends to lend farmers and fishermen a helping hand as part of its CSR employee volunteer program.

HHI Group has a long history of leading the efforts to help support rural economies and overcome national crises. For example, the group stepped up purchases and consumption of agricultural and fishery products, such as potatoes, gizzard shad and chicken, whenever their prices took a nosedive much to the detriment of the rural economies. And more recently in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, a pan-group voluntary blood donation program was conducted to help ensure sufficient availability of blood in these uncertain times.

“Our farmers and fishermen, who have always been working hard to keep food on our table, are now confronted with challenges of an unprecedented magnitude due to COVID-19,” said Kwon Oh-gap, the chairman of HHI Group 1% Nanum Foundation. “In times of trouble, it is all the more true that ‘shared hope is a double hope’ as they say. We count on our group’s campaign to serve as a starting point for creating a healthier society that ensures co-prosperity of businesses and farming and fishing villages.”